Xenophobia: Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Sola Enikanolaiye’s shameful statement on Arise TV
By Lilian Onoh
Barely three days after assuming duty as the new Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Sola Enikanolaiye did what no one else could do – he exposed his vacuity on National TV without any help from anybody.
In his own words, South African Xenophobia, is “just a phase.”
He described this vile phenomenon which started even during the Apartheid era, as nothing more than “a phase” – a fleeting inconvenience, much like teenagers go through a phase and infants go through the teething phase.
Yet it is on record that even at the height of Apartheid, South African Blacks were targeting their fellow Africans fleeing conflict in Somalia and Mozambique with the same hogwash they still espouse – namely that Africans steal their jobs. They went so far as to deny them electricity and access to healthcare, even as the whole world, including these two countries, were united in trying to free them from Apartheid.
Xenophobia among South African Blacks is neither a phase nor is it isolated. It has been going on for decades. It is institutionalised. It is endemic. It is bone deep. It keeps getting worse.
If diplomacy could have stopped it, as Enikanolaiye claimed on Arise TV, then all the effort and expense that Nigeria went through to end Apartheid should have been enough. The combined effort of a world united to free them should have touched their hearts if they had the least bit of conscience or humanity.
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None of that or all our post-apartheid effort with TAC volunteers – the Doctors, Lecturers and others that Nigeria sent to help the Black population – had any impact on them. Rather, it fuelled their envy, with evil politicians weaponising this to fuel further attacks on Nigerians, Zambians, Zimbabweans or any Black person that isn’t South African. As I said previously, Black South Africans never claim that whites, Indians or Lebanese are stealing their jobs. They simply cannot live with the fact that other Africans work harder than them and excel more than them in their own country.
Barely four years after their independence, no one can forget that they threw out three Africans from the train; two of whom were Senegalese. As recently as the mid-2000s, they killed dozens of Somalis in their homes. In 2019, they killed Nigerians, Zambians, Zimbabweans and others. Chief Allen Onyema selflessly deployed Air Peace free of charge to airlift our citizens.
Today, less than seven years later, the situation is worse, with even Ghana, Zimbabwe and Malawi evacuating their citizens too.
The vitriol and violence of South African Blacks towards fellow Blacks can be classified as psychotic in its intensity.
Yet Sola Enikanolaiye, Nigeria’s Deputy Foreign Minister, went on TV and dismissed this institutionalised, long running barbarism – the repeated cycle of murders, rapes, looting and burning of people’s lifelong investments – as, “just a phase.”
However, as his former colleague, his statement did not come as a surprise. The xenophobes are his kindred. He is no different from them.
I have previously written that during his posting in London, he called the Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, a homosexual in a staff meeting attended by over thirty persons on 30th September 2010. Ambassador Dozie Nwanna, the Deputy High Commissioner, was the Chair of that meeting.
When I protested this blasphemous slur on the Holy Father, Enikanolaiye, who is over eleven years my senior in the Service, repeatedly threatened to beat me up without any shred of restraint, right inside the Chancery of Nigeria in London in the presence of dozens of witnesses.
When I wrote a report about the incident, Enikanolaiye then threatened that he would lie to the Moslems in London and tell them that I had defamed the Islamic prophet and get them to declare a fatwa against me and kill me. This was duly relayed to me by Ambassador Nwanna. Sola Enikanolaiye and his friends engaged in a terror campaign against me for daring to protest his abuse against the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI until his posting ended.
For context, it should be noted that Nigeria’s High Commission is about a mile from Buckingham Palace. It is even closer to Scotland Yard.
None of that mattered to Enikanolaiye, who was barbaric enough to threaten to inflame Moslems in London with lies in order for him to cause them to kill me simply for telling him he was wrong for calling the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, a practicing homosexual.
He is absolutely no different from the politicians in South Africa who whip up xenophobic sentiments and send in the mob to do the killings on their behalf. He is also no different from those who unleash the violence themselves. They are acting in ways he himself believes is appropriate and in which he himself has acted and is allegedly still acting. How then can he see anything wrong with their actions?
That is why it was easy for him to dismiss the repeated violent attacks by vile xenophobes against our citizens and other black Africans as, “just a phase” – a trifling.
A man who had absolutely no compunction threatening to beat up a female colleague at least eleven years his junior in service – in London, no less – is not fit for office. A man who had no compunction about weaponising the faith of zealous Moslems in London with lies in order to try to commit murder is not fit for office of any kind.
I covered his atrocities in London quite extensively in my new memoir, “Diplomatic Bedlam, Interactions with Humans, Mutants, Variants and Quadruple Variants.”
Since the book was written and published before he became the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, its contents cannot be said to be a hit piece.
Everything I have said here is already in the public domain. I wrote about his terroristic tendencies in previous articles and stated that a man who could do what he did is no different from a terrorist.
I have equally mentioned his re-fabrication of official statistics when he presented a brief to Commonwealth Military Officers visiting the High Commission stating that Nigeria is 70% Moslem and less than 30% Christian. He is not fit to be in public office, although I am sure that he will use some of his hungry, retired colleagues with whom he committed atrocities or those who are currently receiving his largess or who hope to be sent on phantom tours for Estacode, to issue statements defending him. That is par for the course but the facts remain unchanged.
Because Sola Enikanolaiye is no different from the murderous xenophobes in South Africa, he cannot really condemn them. They are just like him.
Because he sympathises with the murderous terrorists killing Christians, he will fabricate “facts” to dismiss the reality. If his lies had succeeded, I would have been killed in London simply for objecting to him abusing the Pope.
He was Buhari’s helmsman for the smear campaign against President Jonathan when he was in London.
Just as President Tinubu knew the character of the charlatans appointed as Political Ambassadors, he knows Sola Enikanolaiye well and only he knows why he appointed such a character as Deputy Foreign Minister.
There was therefore no need for me to protest his nomination because from experience, I knew it was simply a matter of time before his foot-in-the-mouth disease got the better of him as it often did when he was a Foreign Service Officer in London and elsewhere.
But even I did not expect it would happen within four days of him assuming duty – on live TV, no less.
Nigerians should brace themselves for more of the same dismissive attitude to their problems from him.
The only thing I am certain of is that with his penchant for putting his foot in his mouth every time he opens it, Sola Enikanolaiye, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, will definitely cause an international incident that will surely go down in infamy. It’s just a matter of time.
- Lilian Onoh was Nigeria’s Ambassador to Namibia and former Chargé d’Affaires to Jamaica.
